


Transgression

by Alona



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 01:11:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14759753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alona/pseuds/Alona
Summary: "You hold your liquor like an old soldier, Marisa."





	Transgression

"You hold your liquor like an old soldier, Marisa." 

"You don't," Ozymandias said. Stelmaria aimed a playful swipe at his head, which he avoided easily. 

Asriel, meanwhile, for just an instant had a look on his fierce face of childish delight, and little wonder. Ozymandias had always been private, jealous even, and he spoke so rarely where others could hear it that Marisa herself was surprised. 

She was more or less comfortably ensconced in the corner of the sofa and a haze of drunkenness. She hadn't tried to match Asriel drink for drink, but she had taken more than she usually allowed herself, by routine caution. Had she been answering a challenge? No. The party had just been very dull, and all the more dull because even abroad she and Asriel could not afford to be seen to be too much together -- and when they were in the same room, paying attention to anyone else was an almost insuperable trial.  

With that, Marisa took hold of the threads of the argument she'd tried to make in the cab on the way back to Asriel's lodgings but had found her mind too blurred to carry through with any clarity. 

"It's that you aren't real, you see, Asriel," she said, enunciating very precisely. "You're too definite, too wild." 

"Am I?" he said, with apparent great interest. 

"Yes. It's why you're always going away. If you stayed in one place too long, it would be obvious you don't fit in among good, real things." 

"Good, real things. Like the Church? His Majesty's government?"

"All those. And sober old Oxford and, oh, society parties, especially." 

"I'll give you that one." Then he snorted, and murmured, "Oh, Marisa," and slumped down so that his face was pressed against her neck. "We're the only real people there are. Don't you feel that?"

His breath was hot against her skin, and his words rumbled through them both. Carefully, she raised a hand to the back of his head and gathered a fistful of his hair. He turned his head away from the tug, grunting faintly. On the rug at their feet, Stelmaria stretched ecstatically, the tip of her tail just brushing against Marisa's ankle, and Ozymandias looked on with a pleased, condescending monkey smile. His eyes met Marisa's. 

She averted her gaze, stung, but there was nowhere to look but at the golden crown of Asriel's head. She had abruptly reached the jaded, clinically judging stage of drunkenness and, as she thought, self-understanding. If Asriel were a real part of her familiar world, which felt only too likely with his half-dozing weight against her, she would surely be punished for this. Marisa didn't believe in much of the Church's teachings, not nearly as much as she pretended, but she believed in punishment. In this singular moment of stillness among the tumult of their affair, it was impossible to ignore the inexorable approach of consequences. Desperation grew upon her. 

"You haven't fallen asleep on me?" she said. Her voice sounded almost normal except, she thought bitterly, for an unwonted note of tenderness.

Asriel raised his head. His eyes were bright with intoxication and eagerness. "That would be horribly disobliging, wouldn't it. And I'd hate to disoblige a lady." 

Then in a swift, sure movement he sat up and pulled her onto his lap. It was what she had wanted. For the moment his unhesitating touch still had the power to drive away dire certainties. 


End file.
